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Valley-Momentum Locking in a Graphene Superlattice with Y-Shaped Kekulé Bond Texture

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Valley-Momentum Locking in a Graphene Superlattice with Y-Shaped Kekulé Bond Texture PAPER • OPEN ACCESS Recent citations Valley-momentum locking in a graphene - Magneto-Optical Conductivity of Graphene: Signatures of a Uniform Y- superlattice with Y-shaped Kekulé bond texture Shaped Kekule Lattice Distortion Yawar Mohammadi To cite this article: O V Gamayun et al 2018 New J. Phys. 20 023016 - Electronic spectrum of Kekulé patterned graphene considering second neighbor- interactions Elías Andrade et al - Opening a band gap in graphene by C–C View the article online for updates and enhancements. bond alternation: a tight binding approach Doan Q Khoa et al This content was downloaded from IP address 170.106.202.8 on 26/09/2021 at 22:11 New J. Phys. 20 (2018) 023016 https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/aaa7e5 PAPER Valley-momentum locking in a graphene superlattice with Y-shaped OPEN ACCESS Kekulé bond texture RECEIVED 11 October 2017 O V Gamayun1,3, V P Ostroukh1, N V Gnezdilov1, İ Adagideli2 and C W J Beenakker1 REVISED 1 Instituut-Lorentz, Universiteit Leiden, PO Box 9506, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands 12 January 2018 2 Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Sabanci University, Orhanli-Tuzla, 34956 Istanbul, Turkey ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION 3 Author to whom any correspondence should be addressed. 15 January 2018 PUBLISHED E-mail: [email protected] 7 February 2018 Keywords: graphene, Kekule distortion, valley-momentum locking, massless Dirac fermions Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Abstract Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Recent experiments by Gutiérrez et al (2016 Nat. Phys. 12 950) on a graphene–copper superlattice Any further distribution of have revealed an unusual Kekulé bond texture in the honeycomb lattice—a Y-shaped modulation of this work must maintain attribution to the weak and strong bonds with a wave vector connecting two Dirac points. We show that this so-called author(s) and the title of ‘Kek-Y’ texture produces two species of massless Dirac fermions, with valley isospin locked parallel or the work, journal citation and DOI. antiparallel to the direction of motion. In a magnetic field B, the valley degeneracy of the B-dependent Landau levels is removed by the valley-momentum locking but a B-independent and valley-degenerate zero-mode remains. 1. Introduction The coupling of orbital and spin degrees of freedom is a promising new direction in nano-electronics, referred to as ‘spin-orbitronics’, that aims at non-magnetic control of information carried by charge-neutral spin currents [1–3]. Graphene offers a rich platform for this research [4, 5], because the conduction electrons have three distinct spin quantum numbers: in addition to the spin magnetic moment s=±1/2, there is the sublattice pseudospin σ=A, B and the valley isospin τ=K, K′. While the coupling of the electron spin s to its momentum p is a relativistic effect, and very weak in graphene, the coupling of σ to p is so strong that one has a pseudospin-momentum locking: the pseudospin points in the direction of motion, as a result of the helicity operator p · s º+ppx ssx y y in the Dirac Hamiltonian of graphene. The purpose of this paper is to propose a way to obtain a similar handle on the valley isospin, by adding a term p · t to the Dirac Hamiltonian, which commutes with the pseudospin helicity and locks the valley to the direction of motion. We find that this valley-momentum locking should appear in a superlattice that has recently been realized experimentally by Gutiérrez et al [6, 7]: a superlattice of graphene grown epitaxially onto Cu(111), with the copper atoms in registry with the carbon atoms. One of six carbon atoms in each superlattice unit cell ( 33´ larger than the original graphene unit cell) have no copper atoms below them and acquire a shorter nearest-neighbor bond. The resulting Y-shaped periodic alternation of weak and strong bonds (see figure 1) is called a Kekulé-Y (Kek-Y) ordering, with reference to the Kekulé dimerization in a benzene ring (called Kek-O in this context) [7]. The Kek-O and KeK-Y superlattices have the same Brillouin zone, with the K and K′ valleys of graphene folded on top of each other. The Kek-O ordering couples the valleys by opening a gap in the Dirac cone [8–12], and it was assumed by Gutiérrez et althat the same applies to the Kek-Y ordering [6, 7]. While it is certainly possible that the graphene layer in the experiment is gapped by the epitaxial substrate (for example, by a sublattice-symmetry breaking ionic potential [13–15]),wefind that the Y-shaped Kekulé bond ordering by itself does not impose a mass on the Dirac fermions4. Instead, the valley degeneracy is broken by the helicity operator 4 That the Kek-Y bond ordering by itself preserves the massless nature of the Dirac fermions in graphene could already have been deduced from [15] (it is a limiting case of their equation (4)), although it was not noticed in the experiment [6]. We thank Dr Gutiérrez for pointing this out to us. © 2018 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd on behalf of Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft New J. Phys. 20 (2018) 023016 O V Gamayun et al Figure 1. Honeycomb lattices with a Kek-O or Kek-Y bond texture, all three sharing the same superlattice Brillouin zone (yellow hexagon, with reciprocal lattice vectors K). Black and white dots label A and B sublattices, black and red lines distinguish different bond strengths. The lattices are parametrized according to equation (4)(with f=0) and distinguished by the index ν=1+q−p modulo 3 as indicated. The K and K′ valleys (at the green Dirac points) are coupled by the wave vector GK=-+- Kof the Kekulé bond texture and folded onto the center of the superlattice Brillouin zone (blue point). p · t, which preserves the gapless Dirac point while locking the valley degree of freedom to the momentum. In a magnetic field the valley-momentum locking splits all Landau levels except for the zeroth Landau level, which remains pinned to zero energy. 2. Tight-binding model 2.1. Real-space formulation A monolayer of carbon atoms has the tight-binding Hamiltonian 3 † Htab=-åå r,ℓ rrs+ ℓ +H.c.,() 1 r ℓ=1 describing the hopping with amplitude tr,ℓ between an atom at site ra=+nm1 a2 (n, m Î ) on the A sublattice (annihilation operator ar ) and each of its three nearest neighbors at rs+ ℓ on the B sublattice (annihilation operator b ). The lattice vectors are defined by s =-1 ( 3, 1), s =-1 ( 3, 1), s = ()0, 1 , rs+ ℓ 1 2 2 2 3 a131=-ss, a232=-ss. All lengths are measured in units of the unperturbed C–C bond length a0≡1. For the uniform lattice, with tr,ℓ º t0, the band structure is given by [16] 3 iks· Et()kkk= ∣()∣ee,e. () = 0 å ℓ () 2 ℓ=1 There is a conical singularity at the Dirac points K =2 p 31,3(), where E ()K = 0. For later use we 9 note the identities 2i3p ee()kkK=+ (3e+- ) = e ( kKK ++ ) . () 3 2 New J. Phys. 20 (2018) 023016 O V Gamayun et al The bond-density wave that describes the Kek-O and Kek-Y textures has the form ii()··pqKKsGr++ ttr,0ℓ =+D12Ree[]+-ℓ ⎡ ⎤ =+D12cos⎣fp +2 ()mnN - + ⎦ , () 4 a 0 3 ℓ NqNpNpqpq123=-,, =- = + ,,. Î 3 () 4 b The Kekulé wave vector GKº-= K 4 p 31,0() () 5 +-9 if couples the Dirac points. The coupling amplitude D =D0e may be complex, but the hopping amplitudes tr,ℓ are real in order to preserve time-reversal symmetry. (We note that our definition of Δ differs by a factor 3 from that of [8].) As illustrated in figure 1, the index n =+-1mod3qp () 6 distinguishes the Kek-O texture (ν=0) from the Kek-Y texture (ν= ±1). Each Kekulé superlattice has a 2π/3 rotational symmetry, reduced from the 2π/6 symmetry of the graphene lattice. The two ν=±1 Kek-Y textures are each others mirror image5. 2.2. Transformation to momentum space The Kek-O and Kek-Y superlattices have the same hexagonal Brillouin zone, with reciprocal lattice vectors K—smaller by a factor 1 3 and rotated over 30° with respect to the original Brillouin zone of graphene (see figure 1). The Dirac points of unperturbed graphene are folded from the corner to the center of the Brillouin zone and coupled by the bond-density wave. To study the coupling we Fourier transform the tight-binding Hamiltonian (1), †† Habpqab()kk=-ee ()k k -D ( kKK ++- + )kG+ k † -D*e()kK -pqab+- - KkG- k +H.c. () 7 The momentum k still varies over the original Brillouin zone. In order to restrict it to the superlattice Brillouin zone we collect the annihilation operators at k and k G in the column vector caaabbbk= () k,,,,, kG-+ kG k kG -+ kGand write the Hamiltonian in a 6×6 matrix form: ⎛ 0 ()k ⎞ †⎜ n ⎟ Hc()k =-k † ck,8() a ⎝ n()k 0 ⎠ ⎛ ˜˜* ⎞ ⎜ ee011DDnn+-- e⎟ n = ⎜DD˜˜*ee e⎟,8()b ⎜ 11--nn⎟ ˜˜ ⎝ DDeeenn--11* ⎠ ˜ 2ip ()pq+ 3 D=e, Deen =()kG +nc , () 8 where we used equation (3). 3. Low-energy Hamiltonian 3.1. Gapless spectrum The low-energy spectrum is governed by the four modes uaabbk= () kGkGkGkG-+-+,,, , which for small k lie near the Dirac points at G. (We identify the K valley with +G and the K′ valley with -G.) Projection onto this subspace reduces the six-band Hamiltonian (8) to an effective four-band Hamiltonian, ⎛ ⎞ ⎛ ⎞ 0 hn eeD˜ Hu=-†⎜ ⎟uh,.
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